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A review by crofteereader
The Project by Courtney Summers
5.0
My first thought upon finishing this book was a softly exhaled curse. After Sadie and Cracked Up To Be, I knew that Courtney Summers has a particular skill with peeling up sections of your skin and burrowing deep inside (if it sounds unsettling and vaguely uncomfortable, it is) - with characters who love fiercely and hurt deeply and rage infinitely. But more than anything, they need. They reach out of the page with claws extended.
There are a handful of lines that feel like the chiming of a bell in the back of your brain. Like everything must stop until the cold, echoing vibration peters out. One line in particular (though this may not be final) was something to the effect of "I feel like a lie my sister told" and amidst the maelstrom of this fraught relationship between Lo and Bea, that line alone stopped me cold. And the book is riddled with them.
At various points in the book, you will want to grab both Bea and Lo and shake them, call them stupid, tell them "noooo" super dramatically. As they both circle around tragedy and circumstance and cliché (responding appropriately to the cliché-ness, to the point where you have to nod and go "yep, that really is the only response"). And throughout it all... You don't know what to believe. You genuinely don't know. "Cult vibes" isn't enough when the doors are wide open.
I told myself after reading Sadie that I needed to look back and fill in Summers' backlist. Again, I make that claim because these books can wreck you.
{Thank you Wednesday Books and NetGalley for the advanced copy in exchange for my honest review; all thoughts are my own}
There are a handful of lines that feel like the chiming of a bell in the back of your brain. Like everything must stop until the cold, echoing vibration peters out. One line in particular (though this may not be final) was something to the effect of "I feel like a lie my sister told" and amidst the maelstrom of this fraught relationship between Lo and Bea, that line alone stopped me cold. And the book is riddled with them.
At various points in the book, you will want to grab both Bea and Lo and shake them, call them stupid, tell them "noooo" super dramatically. As they both circle around tragedy and circumstance and cliché (responding appropriately to the cliché-ness, to the point where you have to nod and go "yep, that really is the only response"). And throughout it all... You don't know what to believe. You genuinely don't know. "Cult vibes" isn't enough when the doors are wide open.
I told myself after reading Sadie that I needed to look back and fill in Summers' backlist. Again, I make that claim because these books can wreck you.
{Thank you Wednesday Books and NetGalley for the advanced copy in exchange for my honest review; all thoughts are my own}